Rights Groups Say Shell Oil Shares Blame

By PAUL LEWIS

Published: November 11, 1995

Human rights advocates and environmental organizations in the United States and Britain angrily criticized the Shell oil group yesterday after the hanging of the Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other activists, saying the company had damaged the executed men's reputation with Nigeria's military rulers and could have done more to secure their reprieve.

A group led by Mr. Saro-Wiwa, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni Peoples, had protested environmental damage by Shell and other oil companies in the Ogoni region in the Niger Delta, as well as human rights abuses there by the Nigerian military against the Ogoni and other ethnic groups.

Shell suspended operations in the Ogoni region in 1993 after civil unrest, but still produces about half of Nigeria's crude oil output of two million barrels a day.

"Shell is the bulwark of Nigeria's economy, producing almost half its oil," said William Shulz, president of Amnesty International. "It did not do all it could have done. It had influence which it did not exert."

Gavin Grant of the Ogoni Community Association, a London-based organization that supported Mr. Saro-Wiwa's campaign, said, "Shell demonized Ken Saro-Wiwa in the eyes of the Nigerian military." Human Rights Watch called on Shell and other oil companies to close down their operations in Nigeria.

Royal Dutch/Shell Group, the company's formal name, issued a statement from its London headquarters expressing "deep regret" that the executions had taken place. It said that it no immediate plans to scale back its operations in Nigeria.

Behind the anger with Shell lies a perception that the company was halfhearted in its efforts to secure pardons for the men after they were condemned to death at a trial widely seen as flawed on charges they had incited demonstrators to murder four pro-Government chiefs.

On Oct. 31, after the defendants were found guilty, Shell acknowledged it was being pressed to use its influence'with the Nigerian Government to secure clemency for them, but said it would not do so, saying, "It is not for a commercial organization like Shell to interfere in the legal processes of a sovereign state such as Nigeria."

The company also accused Mr. Saro-Wiwa of supporting violence, saying that although his organization asserted its campaign against the oil drillers was nonviolent, "this is not our experience."

The company's grudging attitude brought protests from Mr. Saro-Wiwa's supporters in the West. On Nov. 2, Shell issued another statement in which it dropped the accusation that Mr. Saro-Wiwa abetted violence and called it "understandable" that the families of those condemned to death should issue "emotional and moving appeals on their behalf."

But the company expressed no regret at the death sentences and again refused to intervene on the condemned men's behalf.

Only after the death sentences were confirmed by Nigeria's ruling military council on Wednesday did Shell issue a third short statement, saying Cor Herkstroter, chairman of the committee of managing directors of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, had written to the Nigerian military ruler, Gen. Sani Abacha, "requesting clemency on humanitarian grounds."

But it warned that openly pressing the Nigerian authorities to commute the sentences might prove counterproductive, saying "many of those who know Africa best, like Nelson Mandela, have advocated quiet diplomacy as the way forward."

In this case, however, quiet diplomacy did not work.

Photo: Protesters outside the Nigerian High Commission building inLondon yesterday denounced the hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others, who had protested environmental damage by Shell in the Niger Delta. (Associated Press)